PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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Roland said:
  • Drinking Water Rebalance


    Murky water is only water found in loot
  • Empty Glass bottles removed from game to match all the rest of the containers in the game
  • Dew collector work station added
  • Players can drink directly from water sources with empty hand by pressing "e"
  • Pot is now required to boil murky water
  • Glue crafting taken into consideration
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"Empty glass bottles" being removed is absolutely unrealistic and a bad change to the game.

"Players can drink directly from water sources with empty hand by pressing "e"" <-- If we can do this then we're going to be even more tied to a water source than before. OR! Now, let me dig deep in my thinky organ here, we could take this thing called a "bottle" or a "jar" and umm, ok now let me think, dip it in to the now apparently fresh drinkable water, and take it with us to drink while we're out and about in the world. Revolutionary idea I know. 

 
Roland said:
So slight that we are sure to get frustrated posts that it doesn't seem to be working properly because they're finding more magazines in something they didn't perk into than in the thing they did perk into. But not so slight that we shouldn't ever get any frustrated posts that someone has gone days or weeks without ever finding any of the magazines they perked into. Fun times ahead no doubt =p
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Lunaura said:
"Empty glass bottles" being removed is absolutely unrealistic and a bad change to the game.
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Yes it is unrealistic but it fits the rest of the game. We also don't have empty acid bottles or jerry cans. Besides, the developers' reasoning is that you can refill and boil an empty jar indefinitely. The alternative would have been to add additional empty containers to the game and implement a more complex water treatment system. However, the developers have decided to take this route. 

Lunaura said:
"Players can drink directly from water sources with empty hand by pressing "e"" <-- If we can do this then we're going to be even more tied to a water source than before. OR! Now, let me dig deep in my thinky organ here, we could take this thing called a "bottle" or a "jar" and umm, ok now let me think, dip it in to the now apparently fresh drinkable water, and take it with us to drink while we're out and about in the world. Revolutionary idea I know. 
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We will still be able to carry glasses of clean water. They simply disappear after we drink from them. Just imagine your character throwing away the jars. Or he eats them. I am not sure about that.

The dependence on local water sources will probably only last a few days until we can build a dew collector. The dew collector will give you 3 glasses of fresh water. Don't ask where the jars come from. You don't want to know.

To build a dew collector you need a filter. You can find it, buy it or get it as a reward. Since it is a very rare find, we will probably buy the first filter from the trader. It should cost 1500 coins.
 

 
RipClaw said:
The dependence on local water sources will probably only last a few days until we can build a dew collector. The dew collector will give you 3 glasses of fresh water. Don't ask where the jars come from. You don't want to know.
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Isn't obvious all the glass jars de-spawn into the ether, and then respawn at the dew collectors for fresh water, as well as random cabinets for the murky water finds.

 
Lunaura said:
"Empty glass bottles" being removed is absolutely unrealistic and a bad change to the game.
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The glass jars are not actually removed. They are just not physically represented in the game any longer. They still show up in the icons for water, tea, etc and when you drink you will still be drinking from a jar. It is simply an abstraction exactly like every other container in the game. It is no worse than not getting an empty bowl or plate after eating a meal, or not getting an empty canister after using gas or acid. Somehow....some way...you have been able to play the game and not be bothered by the realism of there not being any empty containers of anything in the game-- except for drinks. I can promise you that it doesn't take very long at all for your mind to accept the absence of physical glass jars exactly the same way as your mind has been accepting the absence of all of the rest of the empty containers of the consumables you've been using in the game for years.

For preventing the player from having an infinity loop of drinkable water on the very first day of the game it is actually a very good change. As to whether you end up enjoying the gameplay of it or not, that remains to be seen.

Lunaura said:
"Players can drink directly from water sources with empty hand by pressing "e"" <-- If we can do this then we're going to be even more tied to a water source than before. OR! Now, let me dig deep in my thinky organ here, we could take this thing called a "bottle" or a "jar" and umm, ok now let me think, dip it in to the now apparently fresh drinkable water, and take it with us to drink while we're out and about in the world. Revolutionary idea I know. 
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The water from water sources is murky. It isn't fresh drinkable water without consequence. You take damage from drinking straight from a water source and you have a small chance to get dysentery. So really it is just for emergencies until you can get your dew collector farm up and running. You will also find some murky water already in bottled form as you loot which you can take home and boil up for clean water also in a jar. You are still going to be able to carry jars of water around with you in your inventory. But the jars disappears after you drink the water so you can't refill them.

 
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Roland said:
like every other container in the game. It is no worse than not getting an empty bowl or plate after eating a meal, or not getting an empty canister after using gas or acid.
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Well, if I had to do the devil's advocate, I could say that, unlike water will do in A21 with streams/pools, you WILL get fuel canisters by wrenching cars... so how do you explain that? If fuel worked like water, you shouldn't be able to get fuel from Fuel Pumps and by wrenching cars.

 
Jost Amman said:
Well, if I had to do the devil's advocate, I could say that, unlike water will do in A21 with streams/pools, you WILL get fuel canisters by wrenching cars... so how do you explain that? If fuel worked like water, you shouldn't be able to get fuel from Fuel Pumps and by wrenching cars.
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Those are not empty gas cannisters you are getting. They are full of gas. It is no different than opening a toilet and getting a bottle of murky water. What you don't do is fill your motorcycle with those full cannisters and get back an empty cannister which you can then take to the pump and refill with gas. Water now works the same way. You can harvest water from your dew collectors and find water in loot and buy water and other drinks from the trader. In all of these cases the jars are filled with liquid. Once the liquid is used the container is gone.

I guess someone could mod the game so that when you use a bucket while standing in a lake-- instead of drinking the water it would put full jars of murky water into your inventory. This might make it a bit more consistent with harvesting units of gasoline that can be transported for use later. Unfortunately, that would also totally make hydration survival completely trivial and break the survival game, in my opinion, which is why it probably would be best left as a mod for those folks who don't care about the survival game and just want to always have plenty of water at their disposal.

 
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Roland said:
The water from water sources is murky. It isn't fresh drinkable water without consequence. You take damage from drinking straight from a water source and you have a small chance to get dysentery. So really it is just for emergencies until you can get your dew collector farm up and running. You will also find some murky water already in bottled form as you loot which you can take home and boil up for clean water also in a jar.
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Probably need to update the changes to water mechanics portion of the first post to reflect that:

1. The player takes damage from drinking murky water.

2. The water in water sources is murky water.

 
Roland said:
The water from water sources is murky. It isn't fresh drinkable water without consequence. You take damage from drinking straight from a water source and you have a small chance to get dysentery. So really it is just for emergencies until you can get your dew collector farm up and running. You will also find some murky water already in bottled form as you loot which you can take home and boil up for clean water also in a jar. You are still going to be able to carry jars of water around with you in your inventory. But the jars disappears after you drink the water so you can't refill them.
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Im not excited about randomly getting dyssentry, no matter how small the chance. 

Id rather a different system where you can drink a certain amount of impure water before getting sick. Heres a quick idea, you have a sickness bar, eating rotten food, drinking murky water or getting a hit from a zombie fills the bar up by a small percent, at 100% you either vomit or get dyssentry. 

With this system you dont get randomly punished for doing something small wrong but repeatedly doing something small wrong. Basically its blackjack instead of the lottery. This i think would make sense, rather than risking a big punishment for small gains you get a big punishment for 'playing wrong'

I think that will be a far better system, even if it results in more dyssentry in the long run players will at least think to themselves 'i deserve this i should have watched out for my sickness bar' instead of '5%? this is bull@%$#!'.

You could play into this too with some new medication and recipes to manage sickness.

 
bloodmoth13 said:
Im not excited about randomly getting dyssentry, no matter how small the chance. 

Id rather a different system where you can drink a certain amount of impure water before getting sick. Heres a quick idea, you have a sickness bar, eating rotten food, drinking murky water or getting a hit from a zombie fills the bar up by a small percent, at 100% you either vomit or get dyssentry. 

With this system you dont get randomly punished for doing something small wrong but repeatedly doing something small wrong. Basically its blackjack instead of the lottery. This i think would make sense, rather than risking a big punishment for small gains you get a big punishment for 'playing wrong'

I think that will be a far better system, even if it results in more dyssentry in the long run players will at least think to themselves 'i deserve this i should have watched out for my sickness bar' instead of '5%? this is bull@%$#!'.

You could play into this too with some new medication and recipes to manage sickness.
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Would there be a medication to bring your "sickness bar" back down to zero at any point during it's progress to full? 

If so, what's the difference between taking something to "cure" your sickness bar or taking something to cure your dyssentry? 

If not, I'd have to hard pass on that idea because at some point the bar would get full and you'd get sick anyways. 

 
Well in most of the last few versions of the game you could get dysentery from drinking murky water so that really hasn't changed.  I'm not sure how hard it will be to find the books needed to make the water purification mod for your headgear or if the perk still exists that reduces dysentery chances as you level it.

 
bloodmoth13 said:
Im not excited about randomly getting dyssentry, no matter how small the chance. 
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Just the fact that you think this is a new feature underscores how little of a presence murky water has had in the game. The percent chance of getting dysentery has been in the game for years. It shows how badly something needed to change to make dysentery and murky water even have relevance in the game
 

It can be mitigated by taking vitamins or by drinking goldenrod tea and I’m talking right now in A20 as well as in A21. 
 

in real life we don’t know when we will get sick. Someone can smoke and get lung cancer and someone else never does. I don’t like the idea of a bar that you watch and game with— drinking right up to the limit and then stopping because you know the next drink will cause sickness. We don’t know those things nor have that much control.
 

Bad events that happen to us can be random and then we deal with overcoming rather than having full knowledge about our biochemistry and exactly how much to drink and then never having a bad event happen. 
 

 
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BFT2020 said:
Not a fan of this idea.  As someone who on many occasions thrown down a frame block or two to get away from a pack of zombie dogs, I don’t want to die because a counter has yet to reach zero.
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How about avoiding deaths with skills rather than exploits? I am sure that I would have died more than once because of this, if this idea was realized. But such a decision would encourage players to play harder, rather than abuse poorly developed mechanics. Therefore, the game would be more interesting

 
BFT2020 said:
Not a fan of this idea.  As someone who on many occasions thrown down a frame block or two to get away from a pack of zombie dogs, I don’t want to die because a counter has yet to reach zero.
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Easy to beat....put down a block, put another next to it then place a block on top of first block, jump on it, place block on second block & alternate placing. It will take slightly longer but still manageable and your nerdpole is 2 blocks wide instead of one.

 
so the secret stash is disappearing in A21, another hefty blow to the intelligence tree.

I really hope Madmole has some good stuff cooking for the int tree rework  in A21 or else its just going  to be the flat out most worst most useless tree in the game. 
I understand that the skill tree balance is asymmetric.

but each tree needs to have appealing and interesting/impactful choices . I really hope we don't end up entirely ignoring int because it has become totally unimpactful and irrelevant to gameplay

 
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